The present invention relates to an AC plasma display and a method of driving the same, and more particularly to an AC plasma display having a low background brightness and a good dark adaptive ambient contrast and a wide operable voltage range and a method of driving the same.
The plasma display panel is advantageous in possible reduction in thickness thereof, and also in its large contrast in display without substantial flicker as well as advantageous in possible enlargement of its screen. The plasma display panel is further advantageous in high response speed and realizing a multi-color display by utilizing a fluorescent material due to self-emission type display. In recent years, the plasma display panel has been becoming to be used widely in various fields of displays for computers and color-displays. The plasma display panel may be isolated into two types. The first type is an AC plasma display panel operated by an AC discharge indirectly between electrodes coated with dielectric films. The second type is a DC plasma display panel operated by a DC discharge directly between electrodes exposed to a discharge space. The AC plasma display panel is further isolated into two AC types, wherein the first type is a memory operating AC plasma display panel operable by utilizing a memory function of discharge cells and the second type is a refresh AC plasma display panel operable without utilizing a memory function. The brightness of the plasma display panel is proportional to the number of discharge or the number of pulse voltage application. The refresh AC plasma display panel is suitable for a small display capacity plasma display panel since an enlargement of the display capacity causes a drop of the brightness.
A first conventional method of driving the plasma display panel is disclosed in Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 8-272335. FIG. 24 is a timing chart illustrative of a first conventional method of driving the plasma display panel. The priming pule is rectangular-waveform whereby the discharge is strong. If no image is displayed on the screen, a luminescence can appear to increase the brightness of the background whereby a contrast of the dark ambient is deteriorated. The strong discharge priming requires a sufficiently high level of the voltage necessary for priming in relation to the discharge initiation voltage whereby a large amount of the wall charges is formed so that a self-erasing discharge may be caused due to only the wall charges and the wall charges are erased even the wall charges should remain for subsequent third time period for selective erasing the wall charges. Farther application of the wide erasing pulse causes a problem with a narrow available driving voltage range.
In the above circumstances, it had been required to develop a novel method of driving the AC plasma display panel free from the above problem.